Difficult to categorize and branded as "naive", the oeuvres of the great autodidact painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries continue to pose problems for art history. Artists such as Henri Rousseau, Andre Bauchant, Morris Hirshfield, Bill Traylor, Alfred Wallis and Séraphine Louis are far too often isolated in the light of an exotic primitivism, so to speak. Instead, this publication and the exhibition it accompanies at the Museum Folkwang contextualize their powerful creations with key works from the modern era, by artists such as Honore Daumier, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso and, more recently, Blinky Palermo and Mike Kelley. It is not by chance that many of the autodidacts fascinated the canonical modernist artists with their paintings and sculptures, who often publically supported them

Of all Jack London's fictions none have been so popular as his dog stories. In addition to The Call of the Wild, the epic tale of a Californian dog's adventures during the Klondike gold rush, this edition includes White Fang, and five famous short stories - 'Batard', 'Moon-Face', 'Brown Wolf', 'That Top page Spot', and 'To Build a Fire

This book highlights radical urban transformation in eight cities spread across continental Europe. The point of departure, and the foundation of European urbanisation, is the Roman colonial town. In every case social dynamics guided the urban transitions in a traceable way, such that it has been possible to deduce the intellectual underpinnings of the contemporary built environments, as featured in these pages. Differing contexts of time and place show the overarching march of European history and related themes at the urban level. Fundamental changes are brought to light. Each story demonstrates a separate and fundamental transition, ranging from earlier collective configurations to the more institutionalised structures of later periods

"A timely and important book... he brings to it rare clarity and common sense. His book is a fast-paced account of the last sixteen months of the tsar’s life; brief, sharp, but laced with well-judged feeling for the dramas of the time". Catherine Merridale, Observer • In March 1917, Nicholas II, the last Tsar of All the Russias, abdicated and the dynasty that had ruled an empire for three hundred years was forced from power by revolution. In this masterful and forensic study, Robert Service examines the last year Nicholas's reign and the months between that momentous abdication and his death, with his family, in Ekaterinburg in July 1918 • Drawing on the Tsar's own diaries and other hitherto unexamined contemporary records, The Last of the Tsars reveals a man who was almost entirely out of his depth, perhaps even willfully so

When strange things are reported to be floating in rivers in rural Vermont after a flood, old myths about hill-dwelling monsters who abduct humans resurface in subsequent debates, much to the annoyance of local academic Albert N. Wilmarth. However, when he starts receiving letters from a man named Henry Wentworth Akeley about the supposed presence near his farmhouse of an extraterrestrial race worshipping ancient cosmic deities, Wilmarth finds himself drawn into an astonishing correspondence that leads to a harrowing discovery. A seminal early contribution to the horror and science-fiction genres, The Whisperer in Darkness is presented here, along with other classics from the Lovecraft canon - such as The Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Music of Erich Zann and The Silver Key - in a brand-new collection showcasing the finest tales from the twentieth century's foremost purveyor of terror

In this BIG book you can • - Learn about the sport of "dwile flonking" • - Find out where black diamonds come from • - Meet the supernatural animal that haunts the Scottish Highlands • - Discover the British sweets that helped Hillary and Tenzing scale Everest • Filled with facts about wildlife, food, sports, geography, language and some very silly place names, this book will help you uncover national secrets and unearth local legends from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland